My opinion !: Many people are talking about what happened in France! We MUST TAKE A STAND! We cannot be complacent!
“Tolerance is not conformity to the world’s view and practices. We must not surrender our beliefs to get along with people, however beloved or influential they may be. Too high a price may be paid for social standing or even for harmony.…
The Gospel rests upon eternal truth; and truth can never be deserted safely.”
(John A. Widtsoe, Conference Report, April 1941)
“Military service was an obligation highly honored by the Romans. Indeed, a foreigner could win Roman citizenship simply by volunteering for service in the legions of Rome. But, with increasing affluence and opulence, the young men of Rome began avoiding this service, finding excuses to remain in the soft and sordid life of the city. They took to using cosmetics and wearing feminine-like hairdo’s and garments, until it became difficult, the historians tell us, to tell the sexes apart.
“Among the teachers and scholars was a group called the Cynics whose number let their hair and beards grow, and who wore slovenly clothes, and professed indifference to worldly goods as they heaped scorn on what they called ‘middle class values.’
“The morals declined. It became unsafe to walk in the countryside or the city streets. Rioting was commonplace and sometimes whole sections of towns and cities were burned.
“And, all the time, the twin diseases of confiscatory taxation and creeping inflation were waiting to deliver the death blow.
“Then finally, all these forces overcame the energy and ambition of the middle class.
“Rome fell.
Middle class morality died with the economy that allowed it to exist. I'm not about to grow a hippie beard but I do think there's more to life than being a wage slave. People are realizing this now because everything that used to compensate the monotony is slowly disappearing. No more homeownership, no more stable marriages or families that stick together.
People can fight the trends individually, but they indicate a very real shift that's going along. Trying to block the obvious trajectory of our country is like a balding guy rocking a combover. You'll never return to the pas. We can only take what's timeless and perennially true and bring it into the dark world that awaits us.
Probably a more apt comparison would be the end of the Roman Republic.
As it saw many of the same things that characterized the end of the Empire.
Destruction of the Middle and Lower Class. Wealth being concentrated into too few hands. An Elite more concerned with enriching themselves and purging all opposition to their power from among the Roman Elite. Military being screwed over and out of benefits. Toxic Ideologies beginning to manifest and sap the strength from the will of the people. Numbers of Enemies rapidly growing to outnumber ones friends at the gates.
This happened to us during the (un)Civil War. What we have now is the modern version's Empire of Rome, which will fall soon enough, just like the ancient Empire did. History often repeats itself, but does so in an increasingly faster pace when it does, if you don't learn from the originating generation's mistakes.